Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.

Chair seat

On Thursday, as I waited to make a left turn onto Pacific Highway South, I turned on the radio and dropped into an interview with a cluster balloonist.

He was talking about the morning of his first planned flight, and the sheer terror that came over him as he contemplated the consequences of a catastrophic failure — a “low-probability, high-impact” event. It was too late for those thoughts. What had begun as a simple debate with co-workers about whether he could float his office chair with helium balloons had inflated into a manned flight with that same chair to be carried aloft by 54 large balloons arranged in groups to allow him a modicum of control.

I discovered the limitations of helium at a rather sluggish New Years Eve party when I engaged in a similar debate about a plastic champagne glass and some balloons we had brought along from earlier festivities at the Temple Bar. I had to drink most of the champagne to get the glass to finally hang in mid-air from a harness of curly ribbon. I am happy to say it never occurred to me to get a FAA pilot’s license, as he did, or spend a year in research and preparation for an actual flight. I had plenty of other mad ideas to pursue at the time.

Otherwise I might have found myself, like him, discovering that there is always something you did not anticipate or plan for. At over ten thousand feet he realized he was climbing too fast, and he released the balloons which he had rigged for quick release. As it turned out, they were all tied to the front of the chair. Releasing them changed the balance, tipping the chair seat forward and he had to raise his knees to compensate.

He had opted against a seat belt as being potentially hazardous if he needed to deploy his emergency pilot parachute in case of catastrophic failure, so there was only balance holding him in the chair. He now had to maintain this position for four hours. “An outstanding abdominal workout…. The best trainer in the world will not motivate you like three miles of space,” he said.

Makes riding a horse seem pretty easy, I reflected. Gravity is mostly on your side — you just have to keep the horse between yourself and the ground.

At this point in the interview, I pulled in at KCJ Stables, with Jet arriving right behind me. I was there to help her prepare for riding her and Coconut’s first dressage test at the SAFE show. Chrissie, Jet’s coach, was out of town, and so I would be her reader and give her any tips that I could think of. Afterwards we were going to go play at the racetrack.

The first helpful information I provided was that what she was about to undertake sounded pretty sane and reasonable compared to a cluster balloon voyage!

Now, I’ve mostly seen Coconut at shows, where she has been fairly up, like when she met the Easter Bunny at Donida this spring. Thursday’s Coconut was completely chilled, and I got a more dimensional view.

She allowed me to hang over her backside to take pictures, or press the camera against her belly to take a landscape view of all those fleabites.

In her home environment, there are a couple of things anchoring Coconut. The first is Jet, who has engineered this setup where Coconut has her own hill, semi-private barn and custom diet.

Jet has also arranged for a best friend – Sugar, the paint mare who now belongs to Maeve Harris after being abandoned by her previous owner. As Jet brushed Coconut, Sugar edged up to her right flank.

She did relish some attention too, but mostly she was content to be there in a supporting role.

Sugar watched as Jet led Coconut out to the arena, then marched up to the hill to graze, casting occasional glances in our direction, observing rather than judging from on high.

Finally, there is the comfort of rituals. Some of these Coconut has created herself, liking taking care of bodily functions before Jet clips on the lunge line. As Jet set her dressage letters out in the arena, Coconut continued her own warmup, trotting between the corner closest to Sugar, then down the long side to where the other horses were, then walking back alongside of Jet.

These are the practices you fall into when you are comfortable with a horse, when the relationship has matured and each partner in the dance knows their steps well enough to improvise a few as well. Horses may not have our obsession with planning and preparation, but once they know there is a plan, they buy into it, and they learn patterns much faster than we do. Chrissy had warned Jet about over-practicing the test for this reason.

As an aside, I had to admire Jet’s dressage letters — white cans from the dollar store with stick-on letters — easy to set out, and lightweight to carry — useful if you don’t have a permanent dressage arena.

Another thing Jet and Coconut make a practice of is to do is a rein yield immediately after mounting, one to each side. The purpose of this is to reinforce the concept of obedience, but I saw another benefit – it gives a horse something to think about besides the anticipation of walking away.

I sat on the mounting block and actually put the camera down. The test reader has to practice that too – delivering the information at the right moment in a properly pitched and cadenced voice. It doesn’t hurt if it’s a familiar voice to both horse and rider, either – just a little reminder of home. I guess I find these things soothing, anyway – I am not a natural competitor, and though I like striving as well as succeeding, I don’t always enjoy the added stress in the air created by conflicting trajectories.

If only actual dressage tests could be conducted in such relaxed and supportive atmosphere… though that would be totally contrary to the military origins of dressage competitions. If you prepare, plan and practice at home, it should help you keep it together when the pressure is on, but when your horse is pumped full of adrenaline, well, things can get quite a bit more unstable.

Still, compared to flying a tipping office chair three miles above the earth, it all seems pretty straightforward.

I did a little research and found the radio program I was listening to on Thursday — The Story, produced by North Carolina Public Radio — podcast here. The interview was with Jonathan Trappe, and follows a segment on rescuing sea turtle eggs from the Gulf oil spill. Some information about the preparations for Jonathan Trappe’s first flight can be found here. He has kept his day job as Technical Project Manager for mega-consulting firm Accenture in Raleigh, North Carolina. Though he made some promotional flights for the movie “Up,” most of his flights, including his recent crossing of the English Channel, are self-financed.

So I got to hear how about the moment at which he really began to enjoy the flight — at his landing, when the remaining balloons began to “interact” with the trees – “pop, pop, pop” and he knew it was over, but that he would do it again.

“Part of the enjoyment is the feeling of accomplishment you get from doing what you set out to do.” Jonathan Trappe said. The picture of his girlfriend and team is a reminder that although cluster ballooning might appear to be a solitary sport, it is actually not.

You can’t take flight successfully unless you are well grounded. Whatever Jet and Coconut achieve at the show is built on the environment and relationships they have created at home, and Sugar will be there to welcome them back no matter how things go. And as for the rest of us, if you are sitting in an office chair right now, be careful what you dream of!

….and if you haven’t already signed up for the show, you can pre-register via mail – all entries received before through August 5th will get the special $8 entry rate – or on Friday, August 6th at Donida, also from 3 – 8 pm. Enter in person on Friday and get the pre-entry class rate of $8 per class in the main arena/trails/gaming. Dressage test entries are closed, unless their are cancellations.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.